


Just Another Closet Story

by Querulousgawks



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Angst with a fluffy ending, Bullying, Flashbacks, Gen, Homophobia, M/M, healing power of a ransom & holster friendship sandwich
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-07
Updated: 2016-08-07
Packaged: 2018-07-29 20:29:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,527
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7698361
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Querulousgawks/pseuds/Querulousgawks
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“That wasn’t like Hockey Shit at all,” Ransom says, looking at Johnson in vague accusation.</p><p>Johnson’s eyes are wide with distress. “Fuck, Bits, I didn’t even know we could have flashbacks inside a narrative strip.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Just Another Closet Story

"C'mon, Bittle." It's almost affectionate, the way Jim talks to his steer when they won't go through the gate. It's familiar, too. They had a lot of 4-H meetings at the Anderson house. "Just say it."

"Stop it," Eric says, and he gets his first hint of trouble when his voice shakes, when he can't match the lightness of Jim's tone. Everybody in the locker room is staring. But there won't be a _real_ problem. He's gotten out of the way of this hit so many times before, by being good with words and quick on his feet and the guy who never gets offended, who can play it up to the crowd. The old Spin-o-rama. Somebody always cracks, always gets bored, always laughs at his joke about pies instead of the other guy's joke about fags. 

There's always an opening. He always makes it out. 

Jim, Jay, Tag, Doug, the other Jim, Henry. And that's just the first row, the guys closest to him. They've been drifting into a line, Eric realizes, just like Coach taught 'em. They're so familiar. He's looked at these boys for so many years. He's even familiar with this expression - knowing, half-embarrassed, hungry for something. He's just never seen it on all of their faces at the same time, before. While they were forming a line, while they were getting closer. 

"C'mon, y'all." His voice cracks on the opening and _now_ he’s panicking, like his body figured it out before his mind. He isn't going to dodge this hit. 

At least he'll probably pass out. That's a plus, right? This once? Can't be embarrassed when you're already unconscious. His brain is skidding away from this already, circling, like it’s getting ready for the weird white rushing that always came before a hit in peewee. It leaves him still scanning faces for the out, even while a high-pitched inner voice tells him it’s pointless. It can’t be. There's gotta be _one guy_ who'll say that this is boring, he's hungry, Coach would kill them anyway. 

Nobody in the second row will meet his eyes. Maybe Doug -

Doug's eyes flick to Jay, and to the door, and that's all the warning Eric gets before Jay tackles him around the middle and sort of slide-throws him into the closet.

 _Of course,_ just this once, he doesn't faint. 

“ _Accept_ yourself,” Jay coos as he whips out the door and slams it behind him. The last thing Eric sees is the crowd’s eerie focus breaking up into shock and amusement. He’s on his back, shaking, screaming at his muscles to _get up, get out before they -_ and there it is, the lock of the door snicks home. All he can think about is how weird it is that he’s still conscious. 

“It’s for your own good, Bittle!” somebody yells. Chuck, maybe. He’d been hanging back.

“Say it and we’ll let you out-” a pause for more laughter - “of the closet!” They’re losing it out there. 

Eric takes in a breath, feeling his ribs ache where Jay caught him. “I’m not gay!” he shouts, fighting to sound bored instead of desperate. Lord, is that the best he can come up with? It’s a mercy he usually passes out, if this is all the fight that’s in him. He pictures Coach saying _got the drop on you, huh_ and imagines trying to explain. He hadn’t been ready. There’d been so many.

It wouldn’t matter, and that was worse than anything the guys outside came up with.

Doug’s muffled holler of “Wrooong answer!” gets another laugh from the crowd, but it can barely pierce his haze. _They locked me in until I would say I was gay,_ he imagines saying and he _knows_ that his parents wouldn’t actually ask him this, but he hears it in anyway Coach’s gruff awkward rhythm: _well, did you say it?_

And he would really be asking, _well are you?_

Maybe he’d just stay in this closet forever. That was always the plan, after all.

“I don’t think he’s ready to face it,” Tag says, all fake-concerned, and _Lord,_ that’s more irritating than the actual fact of being locked in the dark. He’s never minded small dark spaces, but they won’t _stop talking._ Eric pushes to his feet, the anger warming him up and out of his paralysis. 

“Let me out,” he yells, and his voice doesn’t shake. 

“You just gotta -”

-but Eric doesn’t let Doug finish. Doug _,_ who he’d always thought was different. He is so - this is so _fucking -_ “Fuck you!” he half-screams, and throws himself at the door. 

It doesn’t _work,_ of course, and he’s ashamed as soon as he’s knocked back and sliding to the floor again. The crowd _ooohs_ and his nails scrape through the dust on the concrete as he clenches his fists, then flattens them again. They riled him up so quick. Give it another ten minutes and he probably _would_ say it. 

“That was rude, Bittle,” Jim says, and damn does he have a coach voice down. It makes Eric sick. The snickers pick up, along with a lot of rustling, and a new cold fear slides through him when Jim adds: “maybe we’d better let you calm down and think about it.” More rustling. Someone says, ‘ride’s here’ and then, ‘we can’t really -’ 

-but Jim cuts in with, “anytime you change your mind, Eric,” and everyone shuts up, waiting.

It’s cold in here. They’re leaving. He won’t.

“Fuck you,” he says again. It feels fake in his mouth but he doesn’t take it back. Jim _tsks_ and then the whole mob moves out, and Eric has a wild urge to laugh. Relief, he thinks, just to have them _gone_. He worms around to put his feet up on the door and his back flat against the floor again.

The janitor on the night shift will let him out, probably. If he can keep it together until then. Coach will hear about the new job in a week or so. Madison’s farther from Atlanta but it’s a real town with a Starbucks and a bookstore and a _rink_ , they wouldn’t have to drive into the city for practice. He could work something out with Katya for lessons. 

If he can keep it together until then.

Eric puts one arm under his head for a cushion, and throws the other over his eyes, a break from the dark. “At least you didn’t pass out,” he says into the silence, and lets himself start to cry.

\-----------

And then he’s back in the Haus, with Ransom slowly closing his laptop and Holster scrunching up into the space between the coffee table and the good armchair, trying to get closer to Bitty without touching him. “Sorry I asked, bro,” Holster mutters. 

“That wasn’t like Hockey Shit at all,” Ransom says, looking at Johnson in vague accusation.

Johnson’s eyes are wide with distress. “Fuck, Bits, I didn’t even know we could have flashbacks inside a narrative strip.”

“What does that even - you know what - it’s fine, Johnson.” Bitty sounds tired. “Anyway, that’s the time I got checked and didn’t pass out. I don’t think --” his voice hitches a little, - “we’re gonna make a play out -”

“Oh Bitty, bro, come _here,”_ and Holster looks so much like a dismayed retriever that Bitty does, folding down into his open arms as Ransom slides into the gap on the other side like it’s home base - but in slow motion, with a gentle, hopeful look on his face. Bitty laughs in the middle of his not-quite-crying and it comes out as a snort, which would be mortifying if it hadn’t gotten buried in Ransom’s shoulder.

Things have gotten pretty damp by the time the door pops open and Lardo, Shitty and Jack peer through, stacked like cartoon characters. Bitty halfheartedly waves them in.

“Bros, is there crying?” Shitty starts, only to get cut off by Lardo elbowing him in the stomach.

“Who do we need to kill, Bitty?” She sounds worrisomely sincere.

“Nobody,” Eric sighs, just as Ransom says:

“Jock named Jim Anderson, I think I can find him on Facebook.” He and Holster each extract an arm and fist bump solemnly over the coffee table. Eric snort-laughs again, and _oh,_ Jack’s just standing there, a witness to this terrible snot production. Not even Ransom’s shoulder is enough comfort for that realization. But the look on Jack’s face when Rans said _Jim Anderson_ \- he’s seen it before, right before Jack checked a player headed for Bitty right into the boards. 

“You okay, Bittle?” Jack asks. The words are a soft contrast to his expression, and it makes Eric smile like he can’t feel his collar all flattened down and his cowlick springing up. 

“I’m fine, guys,” he says firmly, but his eyes stay locked on Jack's. “No murders. It was a long time ago. And I ended up here, right?”

Shitty says, “where you _belong,_ bro.” Jack’s vengeance face breaks into Bitty’s favorite smile, quiet and wry. They don’t say anything more, but when Lardo calls for fro-yo and the d-men scramble, Jack reaches a hand down, just offering, for Bitty to pull himself up.


End file.
